


I Think We're Alone Now

by lulabo



Category: The Good Place (TV)
Genre: Gen, Introspection, soulmate stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-18
Updated: 2016-12-18
Packaged: 2018-09-09 10:27:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8887411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lulabo/pseuds/lulabo
Summary: There's alone, and then there's alone-alone, and sometimes there's just alone, alone.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Haywire](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Haywire/gifts).



> with thanks to the internet's leading Mike Schur expert, [iloveyouandilikeyou](http://iloveyouandilikeyou.tumblr.com/)

If you’d asked Eleanor before she died, she probably would have described eternal happiness as a certain kind of weekend, the kind she liked best. The kind—

Or, no—not a weekend. Weekends ended, and often the pall of impending Monday—even after weekends of doing nothing but drinking, watching Bravo, and wearing yoga pants—made her feel listless and morose. It would be a day she was supposed to be doing something else, like a Wednesday. Not just a day she was supposed to be doing something else, either, but like a day when that obligation was one she’d been avoiding, or one she’d never really meant to fulfill, and what she was doing was completely her own thing. Like not taking her neighbor’s grandma to the doctor on a Wednesday when she also had a major work commitment and instead going to Six Flags with tickets she found in her locker at the gym that someone had left behind to spend the day eating hot dogs she got for free by complaining to the management that the vendor’d called her a skank and visibly spit in her slushee.

Like not that exact day, because you could only do that once or twice before it got stale. But the way that day would feel the first time. Life just sliding right off. Not abandonment, but abandoning. The slippery sensation of getting away, wriggling loose, being completely unburdened, untethered, unaccountable to anyone. 

If you’d held her feet to the fire (which she now realizes is a much more real and frightening prospect than she’d ever thought), she’d have said it was partly because of the escape. Getting away was a high she’d sought her entire life on earth. Not just getting away from a place or person or situation, either—it was getting out of her head, emptying her brain of anything but the soothing blankness of being really alone. There were a million ways to do it, to drown out the noise of existence. Sex, concerts, shopping. Eleanor Shellstrop was the champion supreme of being completely forking alone, even when someone was literally on top of her. But even that didn’t have the same lift as be actually alone. 

Eleanor’s perfect paradise? Solitude. Utter, blissful, solitude. And nothing she didn’t want to do. _Doesn’t._ That’s what the Good Place is. Paradise.

It’s not that she’s forgotten that since she got here. But she’s been so consumed with staying, getting in her good-person lessons with Chidi, that she hasn’t given it much thought. Until she realizes it’s exactly what Chidi needs: to get away from her. Not _exactly,_ maybe, given that her vision of paradise-like alone-ness never included shirty French poetry and rarely physical exertion (unless it ended much more orgasmically than a canoe ride would). But she recognizes it when she looks past herself, a little bit, that thing screaming inside him that needs to be anywhere but here. He’s just too good, too Chidi, to say that to anyone out loud. Ever. So she gives him the out.

All of which is forking miraculous, as is the fact that she doesn’t crow about it to Chidi as she’s actually doing it, even if it would be the best forking compliment she could give him.

But she recognizes something else, when she walks away from the dock and the pond and her not-soulmate. 

She’s alone. And it’s kinda shirty.

She’s bored, and a little something else. Not hungry: she’s eaten her own weight in Smartfood, and hungry isn’t quite a thing that happens in the neighborhood. Angry, maybe? It’s that same feeling of a Sunday afternoon—she wants to be enjoying herself, she feels like she could, but there’s something _just_ needling at the back of her brain keeping her from losing herself in the moment. Which is forking ridiculous. She’s in the _Good Place._ And it’s not like it’s a place without problems, obviously, but it’s a place where at the least a girl should be able to enjoy herself with an afternoon on her own.

But she’s not. Not even Convertible-Driving-Top-Down-on-the-Freeway-Without-Getting-Forked-Sideways-by-the-Wind flavored frozen yogurt takes the edge off.

She thinks about going home. A nap, maybe. Naps in the Good Place must be forking _awesome,_ without that sweaty, hangovery feeling of falling asleep on the couch after brunch. A Good Place nap must be actually refreshing—like euphorically good. The essence of what a nap should be. Except she’d wake up to clowns, which she doesn’t love. And then it occurs to her: she could take a forking amazing nap _anywhere she wants_ in the neighborhood. 

“Janet?”

There’s not a word for what Janet does, when Janet is suddenly Janet at your side. She doesn’t materialize, and it’s not a pop. There is suddenly a Janet where before there was no Janet. It is the most Janet thing about Janet, which is basically true of everything about Janet. Eleanor forking loves Janet. She’s like Siri for the universe but without the benchy attitude.

“Hi there!”

Eleanor wonders if anyone ever hugs Janet. “Janet, can you remind me where Chidi lives?”

Janet’s perma-smile remains as she points directly over her own shoulder. “Right there. Upstairs. We’re standing on Chidi’s doorstep.”

Eleanor flinches. She appreciates that Janet doesn’t judge, but Eleanor’s only human. Even if she is dead. “Janet?”

“Yes, Eleanor?”

“Do most soulmates in this neighborhood live together?”

Janet blinks, which is the only indication she’s accessing whatever database exists inside her Janet. “Most, yes. In fact, 99 per cent of soulmates do share the same home.”

Eleanor looks up at Chidi’s balcony. His place looks cute. A little girly, from the outside, like, he’s got those forking hanging flower baskets like a granny, but more than likely inside it’s clown-free. She wonders if it’s locked—if locks are even, like, a thing in the Good Place.

“Janet, one more question.”

Janet leans in conspiratorially. “That’s unlikely, Eleanor. Just in terms of eternity.” She winks. 

“Why _wouldn’t_ soulmates live together?” she asks. 

It’s not quite the question she wants answered. _Shouldn’t_ she and Chidi live together? Do they not because he got here first? Because she’s not supposed to be here? Because she’s a bench and no one’s ever been able to live in the same place with her for longer than it took to get out of a lease? Because what she and Chidi share isn’t an eternal reciprocal relationship founded on something common in their very essence but actually more like an unending void of suck? Or maybe that’s redundant, given the nature of the void. 

“The living situation of a pair of soulmates is really dependent on the individuals within the relationship,” Janet says. “If companionship at every possible opportunity is what each person seeks, it’s likely they were designed to live together as well as elect to spend time together.” Janet isn’t the kind to say, “does that make sense,” or qualify statements, but she must see something in Eleanor’s face. She slouches to one side a little, approximating Eleanor’s posture. “It’s like, if soulmates want to hang out, like, 24/7? Their place in the neighborhood’s made for them to do that. But if they’re like, a little more independent? They might get their own places.” She rolls her eyes. “It’s totally based on the people, right?”

Eleanor glances up at Chidi’s balcony again. “Janet, did you just try to level with me?”

Janet straightens, her smile once again Janet-levels of bright. “I did!” She tips her head. “Michael’s asked me to try ‘relating’ to residents.”

“Good job,” Eleanor says. “I’m going to take a nap, so. See ya, Janet.”

Janet nods. “I hear naps are excellent!”

It’s not the first time Eleanor’s gone into guy’s apartment without his permission. It’s easier when they’re not there, because it gives her a longer time to think of an excuse. Or wait naked. She doesn’t think that will work with Chidi. His place is very—it’s very Chidi, is the only way she can think to describe it. There’s a couch that doesn’t look remotely comfortable, a blanket draped over the back that looks like it’s made from the last wooly mammoth. There are books everywhere—at the back of the main room there’s a door made out of a bookcase, behind which is another room in which there are _more forking books._ There’s also a desk, something that looks like a cross between an iPad and a typewriter, and a painting of a dude who could be a philosopher or a distant relative of Michael’s. Everything smells woody and clean, like it actually smells _smart,_ like Chidi. It’s like someone took Chidi, the person, and transformed him into a place. Nothing else in the neighborhood feels quite like this. Tahani’s house is beautiful and enormous, and there’s something about it that reminds Eleanor of Tahani, but it doesn’t feel like she’s walked _inside_ Tahani. That’s how it feels to come into Chidi’s home. Like the world is made of Chidi, and it’s holding her in a tight but gentle embrace.

So it seems normal to sit on his couch, which is way more comfortable than it looks, and is more comfortable than anything in her entire house, and then to lie down. She doesn’t think anything of pulling down over her the wooly mammoth blanket, which is surprisingly soft, and closing her eyes. And like that, she’s out.

She wakes, and it’s darker, and Chidi’s sitting at the end of the couch with a mug in his hand. Just sitting. 

“I feel forking _amazing,”_ she says.

And she does. Her eyes are clear, her head feels totally normal, not fuzzy and heavy. She feels like she just got a pedicure with foot massage, a professional shampoo and blow out, and like she’s just had Thanksgiving dinner without feeling full. It’s better than any sex she’s ever had. It’s better than flying. And that’s forking saying something.

Chidi cuts his eyes at her behind his glasses. “I’m glad you felt you could make yourself at home.”

It’s the kind of thing that should be sarcastic. Literally anyone else in the universe would be. Make a crack about Goldilocks, if they wouldn’t just outright freak and throw her out threatening to call the police. (Which, for the record, never happened when she was naked.) But when Chidi says it, he’s sincere. Because he is Chidi. Sincere is where he lives. Also this apartment, which is so comforting, Eleanor dreads leaving for her house of clowns.

“I guess I didn’t know what to do with myself without you,” Eleanor says. And it does come out sarcastic. A little. 97 percent, maybe. But she smiles.

“I am the most entertaining person in this neighborhood,” Chidi says, and he offers her his mug.

_Chidi made a joke,_ she thinks—but she doesn’t say it, and she thinks this mean Chidi’s a better teacher than he gives himself credit for. She sips from his drink, chokes. “Chidi, what the fork is this shirt?”

“Honey, lemon, and hot water,” he says earnestly. “It’s good, right?”

“Yeah, it’s forking ambrosia,” she says. Chidi laughs through his nose, and she’s not sure if it’s because she knows what ambrosia is or because he thinks she’s funny, but it doesn’t matter as much as Chidi laughing. 

Eleanor stretches, and Chidi crosses his feet at the ankles. “You want to go do something?” he says. “Get something to eat? We could go over the lesson from—”

Eleanor shakes her head. “Nah. Not right now.”

“You just want to… hang out here?” he asks.

She shrugs. “What else are we gonna do?”

“In actual paradise?” Chidi replies. “Anything we want, I guess.”

Eleanor tucks the blanket up under her chin. “Yeah,” she says. “I’m good.”


End file.
